Back from THE Festival

14 Oct 2003

Now this last one was one TIGHT weekend. The most intense of this year that’s for sure! And one of the best of my entire life! TM03Base was a real blast, but that’s no wonder knowing the amount of work the organizers and their helping hands put into it! That Jay Cunning set, that Suv set, those MCs, that crowd, that people, oh dear, oh dear! It was something extraordinary even if you look at it by a non-Romanian perspective. Proof: Jay Cunning himself stated on the official TMBase forum that it was the best party he played at this year… People are raving about the event on our forum and on others too probably.

But let’s see what happened step by step. From my point of view at least.

Wednesday night I was all set and all ready for the trip. At least I thought I was ready… It rained all day and the temperature dropped to a chilly 6 degrees Celsius. Fortunately the rain stopped just a little before I left my house and so taking the umbrella with me was futile. But I learned my lesson on Wednesday morning when I went to cut my hair and left the umbrella at home and as soon as I stepped out with my nearly bald head it started pouring a really cold rain… So I took my umbrella. Went to the train, hooked up with two friends. We almost froze because Romanian trains purely rule! The inside temperature is equal to the outside temperature minus the wind. So we opened our bags and pulled out almost all the warm clothes we had upon us and wrapped them around ourselves. Fortunately I managed to catch a little sleep. But still I was very tired and after hooking up with my friend, Bogdan, and going around his place, I basically slept all day scaring his parents a little, because they thought I got ill or something like that. But they got used to it because in the following days I did this again 3 times. Sleeping all day that is.

The first night of the festival arrived and I sat around the Evolution club and took some pictures and chatted with various people. Haven’t danced that night because I wasn’t really in the mood. It seems like I inhaled to much cigarette smoke which was everywhere and it caused me a really bad headache. I sat around til a little after 5 AM when I took a cab to the train station to pick up my girlfriend. We went back to Bogdan’s place ready to sleep away the day. This didn’t went that smooth because lots of people were arriving that day, so my phone wasn’t really quiet but I managed to prepare myself for the night ahead. At around 8:30 PM we went and met up with one of the girls I traveled with who happened to be a friend of my girlfriend’s and a guy who was a friend of mine. The girls decided to visit a club first but me and Steve went directly to the party place. Meeting people, handshakes and it started!

Two stages and one chillroom. It sounds simple. But it was in fact heavy. Very heavy! After a while Bogdan arrived with my camera and minidisc deck which I imediately put to work. I will not describe everything that happened because I intend to post a much more musically oriented and detailed review to drumandbass.ro (in Romanian) but I can say that on this night Suie Paparude really drove the crowd crazy. And that ending with Toxic. Wow! That was madness too.

Went “home” dead tired. Slept one more day. And got ready for the main and final night. Which featured among others Jay Cunning / Atomic Hoolingan and DJ Suv. We got there a little late so I missed a set I wanted to see, but I received the promo CD from Gojira (the great fun maestro) which really stuck into my CD drive today. Nice tunes. Mr. Pit, Sensorship, Penal and then…

Jay and Atomic’s set was pure madness!!! I never saw such a show and never felt so good while witnessing a live act. I couldn’t dance a lot because I was busy taking photos of Jay doin’ his funky duck dance or the crowd hugging one of the Hooligans. Then the backstage got really crowded. I took pictures with me plus almost everyone around there… All the celebrities. Hehe. I rule. I heard that Unu’ really rocked at Stage 2. Unfortunately they played at the same time as Jay… So I missed them. I couldn’t really believe it but Suv and MC Verse kept the atmosphere hot even after that explosive breaks set that preceeded their set. I couldn’t resist anymore and started jumping around. And the backstage got even more crowded. My girlfriend and her friend joined me. Steve joined. It seemed to me everybody was back there, even if officially they weren’t allowed. Trigga of the Infamous Massive crew (The Deer from Buzau between friends, ehehe) ended the night for me with an angry and wicked drum and bass set. There was one more DJ after him but we went to Bogdan’s place to lay our heads on the fluffy pillow because my brain and feet were playing dead.

Sunday afternoon and night we recorded some of the important from MD to computer, went out but trying to get into some club I was stopped the reason being I was wearing sneakers… Although as much as I could see almost everyone was wearing them inside. The guy at the door probably had something against my face, or something… I was a bit upset but it passed. We went to the friend’s-of-girlfriend apartment, watched the end of Erin Brockovich and a whole episode of Sex And The City which always amuses me a lot. It turned out I had more fun this way than sitting in some hype club sipping an expensive beer…

Monday morning some nice guy took us home by car for free. I couldn’t really believe it. But I was finally home. Phew!

Hereby I send out my greetings to everyone concerned! I had one of the nicest times of my whole life! It was more than great! Thanks!